Reseting CMOS Password

[Mr. tech]

hey there,

I'm making chaages to an ex-school PC that has a password needing to be entered to gain access to the CMOS.

Is it possible to find out the password or to remove it without knowing what the password is? I can't seem to find the password...

Cheers

Tech

 

[Alex81388]

Not sure if this will work. But try taking out the batery on the motherboard for a couple minutes. Then put it back in and boot.

 

[Mr. tech]

Thanks mate,

What exactly is the battery on the mother board? What does it look like and how easy is it to remove?

Cheers

 

[Nubius]

Theres only one battery on the motherboard so it's fairly easy to find it. Its just like a watch battery. Flat and circular

I'd suggest keeping it out 24 hours, but I've had times where even that didn't get rid of the password.

You could try flashing the BIOS with a new one

 

[Mr. tech]

OK, I'll give that a try... Not sure how easy it will be but if I run into problems I'll psot.

If that doens't work I'll try the flashing

Cheers

 

[Mr. tech]

Hmmmm... how do I get it out?

Its about 1.5cm in diameter, sitting on a black circle. It has a little lever thing (can't explain it exactly....) and some of the black circle is overlapping the battery stopping me from pulling it out easily.

Any suggestions?

Would flashing the BIOS with a new one be easier? If so how?

Thanks

 

[Nubius]

Would flashing the BIOS with a new one be easier? If so how?

Well considering resetting the CMOS requires jumping pins or pulling out a battery which could never really render your computer useless whereas a bad BIOS flash can....then by all means resetting the CMOS would be easier.

The battery should simply pop out. They have to be held in there somewhat tight but I've never come across a battery you absolutely couldn't remove. That would be a very critical design flaw.

You need a BIOS flash utility, a floppy, and the new BIOS.

In goes floppy ( if for whatever reason the boot sequence is set to HD first and not floppy you're kind of screwed being that you cant change the sequence )

Once in dos prompt, you run the BIOS flash utility, it'll ask you for the name of the new BIOS, type it, hit enter, you're off.

Any power downs during the process = brand new paperweight.

 

[Mr. tech]

OK, I'll have another go. Do I need t run the PC at all whilst the battery is out (if i can get it out )

It's not the newest PC...

 

[Mr. tech]

woot! I got it out Like I said, do i need to boot the PC and for how long?

 

[Nubius]

No you do not boot the PC.

You simply take the battery out and leave it for however long you want. For CMOS resetting most suggest 24 hours, but like I said I've done that before with no luck.

Also if you know what particular BIOS you have, you can search for Master BIOS passwords...passwords that will bypass whatever one is currently set, but again I've found em before and they didn't work for me.